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ehrichweiss writes "The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is warning parents and teachers of a new threat to our children: sounds. Apparently kids are now discovering binaural beats and using them to get 'physiological effects.' The report goes on with everyone suggesting that such aural experiences will act as a gateway to drug usage and even has one student claiming there are 'demons' involved. Anyone who has used one of those light/sound machines knows all about the effects that these sounds will give and to state that they will lead kids to do drugs is nonsense at best. It seems the trend in scaring the citizens with a made-up problem has gone to the next level."

Source? I could name 14 people off the top of my head who I know personally that are currently drug users...and every single one of them have a full time job, a family, and would be considered to be financially and maternally/paternally successful.

You say that like having a full time job, financial success, and parental status has anything to do with whether or not one has a dependency issue. See here [nytimes.com] for what I mean. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying your friends are addicts or have problems, just that the points you're making do not demonstrate that they aren't.

My point was that you can't have a full time job, a healthy family life, and still be considered financially successful while also being a drug abuser.

I don't see a dependency as being the same thing as being an abuser, though. Example:

My soon-to-be wife can't get started in the morning without caffeine; she has a dependency on it. That being said, if we suddenly found ourselves low on money, she isn't going to sell our DVD player just so she can go to Starbucks.

My soon-to-be wife can't get started in the morning without caffeine; she has a dependency on it. That being said, if we suddenly found ourselves low on money, she isn't going to sell our DVD player just so she can go to Starbucks.

I think the point being made is that many of the criteria for qualifying if someone is abusing something has to do with how it affects their ability to do everyday, necessary things. Take for instance sex. No one is going to say that sex is unhealthy, but when you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else, its an addiction or an abuse and takes on a clinical aspect. That is actually how professionals do draw the line between harmless habits and addictions. A little fuzzy, but a relatively straightforward way of looking at what represents an abuse.

Of course, possession laws fly in the face of this common sense standard of what constitutes harm and that is yet another reason why drug laws need to be completely overhauled to emphasize avoiding harm to others caused by abuse as opposed to simply demonizing the person for happening to possess something that can't do any harm on its own.

Also, education is key. EVERY parent with a teenage child needs to let their kids know about http://www.erowid.org./ [www.erowid.org] It very well may save their children's life or one of their children's friend's life some day.

Education and knowledge are unbelievably important. False statistics, fear-mongering, and hearsay only encourage kids to try it, minus the knowledge of how to remain as safe as possible.

and disagree. Education: yes. Using erowid as a single source: definitely not.

My nephew found an old tank of freon from an A/C service cart at a diesel repair shop. After reading the info and reports at erowid he believed he was perfectly safe to inhale from the tank. Apparently none of the reports and info on erowid mentions the dangers of inhaling freon from an A/C service machine: which is full of oil and contaminates from all the service discharges performed.

My nephew got more than he bargained for. Fortunately the I'm-sure-I'm-dying spell only lasted a couple days and only required one trip to the ER.

I would have told him, had he simply asked. However, not so sure he would have listened seeing as how brilliant the internet has turned him.

Funny, I went to erowid and searched "Freon". Here was the very first story that came up:
"[Erowid Warning: Our understanding of the literature is that there is no such thing as safe use of volatile solvents, aerosols and other street inhalants : their psychoactive effects are inseparable from nerve and organ damage. We have chosen to include these reports to help document the real world use of inhalants, but their inclusion is not intended to imply that they are anything but dangerous.]

I guess ill start off with some backround info...
My grandpa owns an air conditioning repair place. Its basically a family business. Ive worked there, and my cousin used to work there. I worked on a/c units for a few years (illegally though, I was only 18 and didnt even have a license).

While I worked there a few friends of mine kept trying to get me to try huffing freon since I had access to mass quantities of it. They also tried to get me to hook them up with it. I always harshly turned them down, because I know how dangerous this shit is. It says right on the box in big letters that inhaling it can and will make your heart stop, among other bad things. But you guys are probably aware of this, so ill go on with my story...

One morning in 1998 I woke up to a phone ringing. It was my grandpa, and he was sobbing. He told me to wake up my parents and come to 'the shop' quick. I hauled ass over there to find an ambulance in the parking lot, along with a bunch of cops. My cousin (who was working there) had been huffing freon (r-22, if that matters) from a trash bag and had passed out into the bag. There was a small amount of liquid freon in the bottom of the bag. Needless to say, his lungs were practically destroyed and he had been dead for a while.

I guess what im trying to say is do not do this shit!!!! Ive messed with inhalants before and I know how cool they can be, but damn, dont huff freon. When you get it out of someone's a/c, think about it. Youre not even getting quality freon. It has probably been in the unit for at least 5 years; during that time it absorbs oil from the compressor, chemicals from the welds in the freon lines, and other shit like that. Freon is a tasteless, odorless chemical. The 'honey' taste ive heard described is the impurities in it from the machine its been in. And if the compressor is going out or electrically shorting from age, you might be getting burnt freon. Once when changing out an old unit that had some in it, I had on a mask (of course) and let a blast of this stuff out on a nearby anthill. The ants immediately stopped moving, dead. This is nasty shit.

Anyway, if you wanna get high, inhalants are a dumb way to do it. Just smoke some weed or sniff some coke or something. If you like inhalants that much, stick to the tamer ones like whippits or something. Freon is just about the most dangerous one you can do, especially if you are getting it out of an a/c unit. Theyre trying to get rid of freon altogether because of what it does to the atmosphere; just think about what it does to your lungs and brain. Peace.

I miss my cousin"

Maybe your nephew doesn't know how to read, or thinks that stern warnings are not real.
In any case you can hardly blame erowid for not warning him. This took me literally 5 seconds to find and was the first entry in the search results.

It used to be believed that drug use led to music. There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. Harry J. Anslinger (1892-1975) Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition.

Now we know better, it's the other way around - aural experiences will act as a gateway to drug usage.

Up until high school, I spent my entire life locked into an ideal Norman Rockwell painting. No cares, no worries and just high on life. Things took a turn for the worse one day when I picked up an 288 tuning fork and a 320 tuning fork. I struck them both against my leg and held one up near either ear.

It was pure bliss. Like Jesus was just 32 hertz away from me. I wish I could describe the feeling. Like half of all the blades of grass in the universe were hummingbirds and the other half were bumble bees.

Let's see--I was a freshman at that time. Yeah, things just went downhill from there. I had earrings made with a tuning fork hanging from each one. The left side was A440 and the right side was a custom 444. I could raise my fingers to either lobe and flick it for instant gratification. The other kids called it ear basing. I called it god. And he was just nineteen dollars and eighty cents on Amazon [amazon.com]. By my sophomore year I was already pretty hard into Fourier transforms. Everyone's tympanic membrane had a bifurcation sweet spot that could be exploited with the right theoretical frequencies. Yeah, we would rent middle of nowhere motel rooms to smelt hematite down into custom tuning forks and poor them into clay molds in the bathtub. We paid in cash and by the time the cleaning made hit the room it was slag burns in the carpet and clay all over the place. You probably remember the 20/20 investigations following all the reports.

Shit got real heavy real quick and one day we found Scrye (nickname for the metallurgist) hemorrhaging blood out of his ears in a coma from strapping two subwoofers to either side of his head with duct tape. I knew I had to get out, but how?

We gathered up all our text books on math, audio & music theory, physics, chemistry, electronics and metalworking and burned them in the parking lot of the hospital we brought Scrye to. I would never read about science again.

Parents, heed the images of those children getting 'innocent' highs from sounds and make sure they don't make the same mistake I did. This is just a gateway to bigger and badder things. If you find literature on Fourier Analysis, Electronics or Calculus in your child's bedroom, please get your child to Oklahoma and get them help from the nearest minister. I don't care if you have to lock them up in the basement against their will. Just make sure you save them from the same fate as I... COMPLETE EAR DESTRUCTION!

There is one slight error in your very good writeup on how binaural beats works. What you described, playing two notes on two different sound producers (in this case tuning forks), causes an actual, physical, "beat". The sound waves interfere or combine with one another in physical space, and a new sound wave (or a composite of the two, same difference) is created and propogated through air, the medium of sound.

The binaural beats mentioned here work a little differently, in that a recording is pla

As weird as this is to the "concerned parents and teachers" in Oklahoma, it is a basic effect of our minds and perception. There are no demons, no narcotic gateways, no pushers, and for most people, no permanent effects(*).

When the "Brain Machine" aka Sound-Light Machine (SLM) article came out in MAKE [makezine.com], I immediately built one. For me, it works great, and the visuals I see tend to be geometric patterns, depending on the frequency of the beats. It can be quite intense. For those who haven't seen this, apart from the silly graphics on the glasses as pictured in the article, the "brain machine" is a pair of safety glasses with LEDs, the microcontroller, and a headphone jack. The LEDs flash in synchronicity to the binaural beats, and this is what makes it so powerful -- your brain gets two very important senses stimulated the same way. Once the sequence finishes, the effect is totally over, there is no linger feeling, or "high" or demonic possession.

They used to sell audio cassettes that had binaural beat recordings. After I built the SLM, a friend showed me cassettes he had purchased a couple decades ago in Europe, but I haven't heard them to compare.

(*) The only caution I can think of is the possibility of bad effects in people susceptible to seizures. I don't know enough about that condition to know if seizures can be triggered through our hearing, but the SLM-like devices could possibly be a trigger to light-sensitive individuals.

BTW, I just spent the last 5 minutes getting high off of the wikipedia article on binaural beats, which includes audio of two examples. I am naturally skeptical of anything that claims to alter human consciousness. While I did not experience an awakening to the presence of the spirit plane or anything like that, I admit that I feel a weird emptiness behind my eyeballs, and it feels like the bridge of my nose is stuffed with cotton.

get yourself a copy of Gnaural [sourceforge.net] or SBAGen [uazu.net] and play around with the different programs. i frequently drift off to sleep with one running in my ears, and have noticed i seem to sleep fewer hours and feel more refreshed. also good for naps and creative boosts.

Things took a turn for the worse one day when I picked up an 288 tuning fork and a 320 tuning fork. I struck them both against my leg and held one up near either ear. It was pure bliss. Like Jesus was just 32 hertz away from me.

That's only the beginning. I tried it with a 398 tuning fork and a 440 tuning fork and discovered the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

I once bought some level_upper off a buddy, and I thought it was the real deal, but as soon as I took the first hit I knew it was laced with Lady Gaga. Now I'm hooked on pop music:( Just be careful where you buy your sound from guys.

"It seems the trend in scaring the citizens with a made-up problem has gone to the next level."

Yeah no kidding, and you know why? People on Madison Ave. make huge money figuring out ways to sell more useless products to the populace. It has been proven that fear and uncertainty can significantly drive sales. Don't believe me? Google "fear drives sales"

This kind of insanity is just plain stupid. Binaural beats have a documented psycho-dynamic effect... programs like Hemi-Sync are intriguing. I don't think people are going to get "high" off of them though. But what if they do? If binaural beats are made illegal and deemed "narcotic", then the "drug war" is more about denying people access to their own minds.

I'll tell you, as a non-drug user (besides caffeine and rare alcohol), that the War on Drugs itself is at fault for such misconceptions. You see, I've known people who habitually and recreationally use various banned substances. As a result, I knew that most of the government messages regarding drugs were complete fabrications. Not familiar or interested in the specifics, I treated all of this information as suspect. Only after talking to an experienced drug user did I discover that "yeah, meth is really bad, dangerous, addictive, and horrible." When the government message and the War on Drugs treats things like marijuana as something significantly scary, evil, dangerous, etc... compared to tobacco and alcohol, they do a disservice to everyone. When someone obtaining a recreational substance less dangerous than alcohol also has the opportunity to buy much more dangerous things, and has the same "information" about them, that's where the whole "gateway drug" problem comes in.

My take: put all of it on store shelves and provide real actual data about the stuff being sold. Those who want to kill themselves on meth are people who will cause problems anyway... at least under that situation they won't burn down an apartment complex manufacturing it, or rob houses to pay for a habit no more costly than Night Train.

Make them legally equal, but informationally distinguished, as opposed to the current, more dangerous reversed situation. And this just applies to one benefit...eliminating a ton of violent crime, property crime, and wasted tax dollars would be mere side effects.

you will notice of course, that portugal's efforts are aimed at reducing drug use

in other words, their tactics are different, but the goal is the same: reduce drug use

so there will always be a war on drugs, forever. in fact, there always was a war on drugs. tactics change, but reducing drug use in society is merely a constant maintenance function of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday, that will never end. you don't declare a "war on garbage" and clean your apartment up once, and never ag

so yes: the notion of a "war" on drugs is stupid, but whatever you call it ("the cleanup on drugs", "the trash collection on drugs"?) you must realize something absolutely true: the reduction of drug use is an effort that will never end, whatever the tactics, forever

and if you don't know why drug use has to be constantly cleaned up, you don't know much about your world and human nature

You are sadly misinformed. Prohibition of any substance increases it's use, just look at your history books. The drug war, or whatever you choose to call it, has done nothing but increase dangerous drug use, criminalize otherwise law-abiding citizens, enabled a lucrative black market and seriously eroded civil rights.

You are sadly misinformed. Prohibition of any substance increases it's use, just look at your history books.

Actually it simply increases it's price. And given market dynamics, that should reduce the overall usage... the problem comes in when the black market usage of said substance increases (which is an obvious correlation), which increases crime and all sorts of other bad things.

Society has mechanisms in place to deal with addicts. Criminalizing the possession of a substance only serves to make an already bad situation worse. People who are drug addicts eventually lose their jobs, friends, etc. That is enough of a punishment. A person can't be saved from themselves. They need to learn their own lessons.

the worst jail in the most orwellian government authoritarian nightmare you can imagine, doesn't begin to compare to the bars drug addiction places in the mind.

where before a mind might contemplate philosophy, literature, art, now you have an interrupt cycle which turns this person into a drug seeking zombie

So what? There's millions of people who do nothing but sit in front of the TV watching reality shows and collecting welfare checks. They certainly aren't contemplating philosophy. Are you going to ban stupidity too?

You can't force people to be free. You can only provide them freedom to make their own choices, for better or for worse. If they choose to create a prison for themselves, whether it's a drug-induced haze or a mind-numbing existence of watching The Hills, trying to force people to live the way you want will only cause problems.

"Binaural Beats" actually do produce pysiological effects by stimulating certain parts of the brain, but they're pretty weak in my experience, slight lethargy or increased heart rate at best. I know some people who are highly susceptible to them and get strong effects but even they find them to be too much trouble for the effect and only used them a few times as a novelty.

that said, the idea that they could work as a gateway to drugs isn't TECHNICALLY without merit. Trying these could lead to wanting to see what the real drug they're supposed to be emulating is like. But you're just as, if not more, likely to want to try drugs after watching Dazed and Confused than listening to binaural

I don't even know where to start. The whole news item is full of holes. Basically a load of bollocks. The whole concept is ridiculous, it's like that H20 hydrogen dioxide website. The language is so slanted ' luring kids' etc. oh dear. I seriously beleive If I lived in the states I could not watch american TV. It's just so absurd, and sensationalist, along with outright propaganda and annoying pronunciation of words. GRRRRRR Agh it makes me angry. How can people be so fucking thick.

Well surely if music can make you high then the myth of the brown note cant really be a myth. Seriously if they believe that someone should just come up with one that plays backwards and tell the concerned parents that it will sober their kids up.

My friend and I used to sit on opposite sides of another friend and sing a falsetto "oooooo" at slightly different frequencies. Her annoyance was entertaining at the time, but now I can't help but worry what kind of life we got her into. She's probably dead in a gutter somewhere, in a pair of studio headphones.

I know it's bullshit. You know it's bullshit. Probably the vast majority of people on Slashdot know it's bullshit. But I'm not completely convinced that the people in charge of regulating drugs know that it's bullshit; and that's a bit scary (and incidentally the point of posting it here).

I made this video a while back - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weOpxELqn-c [youtube.com] - I've done a lot of research on binaural beats. They are used to calm the mind and promote a lower brain operating frequency that is akin to relaxation or meditation. Some people say it's a placebo effect, others use it to promote a state of calm in their minds as they try to rid themselves of the daily thought process (many, many thoughts coming in and out of your head very quickly, which is associated with high brain frequencies). Trying to demonize BBs would be like trying to demonize meditation...which I'm sure isn't too far off.

I guess the fear surrounding what people don't understand will never go away. I suggest a split in civilization - let the smarties burrow deep into the soil and the dummies can fry up at the surface.

Sounds like a ploy to get rid of Cell phones, mp3 players, etc. from campus to me. There is a motivation here other than what is being delivered as with most things today. Redirection and NAT are being employed to shuttle popular opinion to a place where it does not need to be. Just my 2c...

No wonder people still believe the brown note myth. If there are enough suckers to believe this someone should really market these "beats" played backwards as a way to sober up their musically high children...

I knew you could get high on music! It's those damn Beatles and Rolling Stones again isn't it! In my day we were happy with the waltz and ragtime, now kids are listening to John Lennon and Mick Jagger.

"What is the truth about rock music? Music is a powerful and perhaps the
most powerful medium in the world. Music. Plato says when the music
of a society changes, the whole society will change. Aristotle, a contemporary
of Plato's, says when music changes there should be laws to govern the
nature and the character of that music. Lenin says that the best and the
quickest way to undermine any society is through its music...Music, ladies
and gentleman, is the gift of

There has been some discussion regarding the music and chants in church having a psychological effect upon the parishioners. If you ever spent any time listening to Gregorian chants you can feel that there is "something" going on. Irrespective of your particular faith or lack of one.

I am a user of binaural beats (not of the illicit/druggie type) but for more sober stuff. I use this for meditation "Hemi-Sync.Gateway Experience" and to enhance focus and concentration "Hemi Sync Metamusic". If you can get hold of Hemi-Sync Metamusic "Einstein's Dream", you will know what I am talking about.

Many high school kids are looking for thrills. THey concoct all kinds of things to get high. Some are not dangerous like smoking banana peels. Others can be tragic like downing multiple bottle of cough medicine.

I've been studying Shamanistic meditation, Kundalini and sexual Tantra, looking for something to quiet my mind and help me deal with my ADD more effectively. I got off the drugs about ten years ago and slowly my mind's becoming more organized; I'm not learning to cope with the voices and hyper-awareness, I'm actually getting better. The hyper-awareness is different, still present but completely reformed, and a powerful tool. I'm at a point where I'd like to polish up what's left, put some structure on myself enough to better organize myself; it used to be impossible to learn to play instruments, now it's difficult and I can't retain progress but it does come. A little work, and maybe I can actually accomplish something in my life.

The options for assistance to relax and open the mind include mexican magic mushrooms, LSD, marijuana, and even alcohol; but although I drink, it's not really to get drunk (and drunkenness is painful and destabilizing for me, it's effectively like having the flu). I'd rather not play with any of that other junk; so I need either much patience and concentration, or a substitute.

What I found in my studies was that the old places were made to do things with sound... beating drums, chants, hums, anything... they were tuned to amplify the certain sounds that put your mind into a particular state. I did some deeper digging, sideways research, and found the details of binaural beats; a quick experiment with this gave me some interesting answers. I expected nothing, or at most a gentle feeling of calm; when I kicked it on and had it pull the beating from 20Hz down to 7Hz in 3 seconds, I nearly blacked out. I yanked the headphones off but felt pretty fucking groggy for a few seconds, before I managed to shake it off.

This is it, this is what I need. Something subtle... music, designed with soft instruments, different wave patterns such that the beat is lost between them, like a flute and a gentle saxophone or a piano... but enough that the effect occurs, gently. Something to ease my mind in an unnatural way, without a drug. My refusal to use substance-based aids for this has lead me to this strikingly effective, pleasant, and constructive solution: rather than encourage drug use, we can encourage a new art form, an exploration into a new method of music creation, new tools transcending just instruments and effects and paradigms.

The most striking thing of all is that these considerations mimic Timothy Leary's thoughts on LSD: this has the potential to expand minds, to drive us as a people towards a period of inner reflection and a search for something beyond the mundane life trying to scratch out a few dollars while being watched over by people in power. Leary thought the drug would do that, would expand peoples' minds, make them start a search for something more, a search for something beyond the bland existence we follow.

I don't support the use of dangerous substances-- LSD may not be so toxic, but it can remain in the system and randomly re-assert itself at any time, even at very bad times; mushrooms are toxic and can cause severe damage. I also believe that people are idiots, and the use of such substances recreationally is pure idiocy; encouraging any general use will swiftly lead to 99.999% of use being an expression of this idiocy, and destruction of society (remember, long ago, mushrooms were considered sacred and not seen as a recreational toy by the masses; this world no longer allows that manner of thinking).

I do, however, strongly encourage introspection to discover one's motives in life, as well as a general examination of the world to attempt to understand and even improve upon the machine we live in. The use of such auditory methods is not inherently addictive; there is no tainted chemistry taking place, and it substitutes as sleep (meaning you sleep less, 6 hours instead of 8 hours). It is not toxic, because it's not a chemical. It's not dangerous, because it's not a physical, life-depriving act such as auto-asphyxiation. This could be a powerful and benign tool for those who wish to walk a path without walking too close to a certain less desirable parallel path.

Nothing new under the sun. This dates me, but when I was in high school the local branch of the John Birch Society advertised an upcoming presentation called "Pot, Rock, and Revolution" that was going to expose how the jungle beat of rock & roll stimulates primitive brain responses and was part of a Communist plot to turn the youth of America into zombies. They seriously cited the Beatles' "Back in the USSR" as propaganda piece, clueless to its status as a parody of "Back in the USA", etc. So a group of long-haired kids went to the meeting, attracting nervous stares but surprisingly little outright hostility, and amazed the crowd by noting that several of us had straight-A grades despite a life-long diet of rock music.

I used to use this quite a bit and create my own experiences. What is does is force your brain waves into different states of consciousness (usually theta, associated with sleep). It takes a while to learn and get your brain used to making changes while conscious. After a while though it is possible to do without the listening to the "beats".

It's not really music, but it’s like these two tones, one in each ear that produces the beat, which only exists in your head. So you sit there and listen to two tones, then you start to hear a beat, but is more sounds like ocean waves. Then it becomes almost like you feel like dreaming and if you close your eyes you might start to.

With enough training one can begin to lucid dream and it's hard to explain but in some of the sessions I experienced what could only be explained as a non-sexual full body orgasm of pure bliss. It also reduces the amount of sleep one would require in order to feel properly rested. It is really good stuff and even better when you learn to shift your brain waves without the beats while conscious.